Forte est la terre

A close-on-ordinary year, spent in a rural community deep in the Puisaye countryside – a meeting point for farmers’ families and travellers of all sorts, be it the doctor, postman, vet or the local and national officials elected by the community. Therein lies the history of an ancestral France, whose voice still echoes down through the lives of the majority of French people. Here, an epoch is drawing to a close, a world is disappearing, as can be seen in the juxtaposition of opposites…: wealth and poverty, agricultural output and mere survival are found side by side, depending on the lie of the lands. For some, there is a seeming triumph, firm with conviction; others are swallowed up, victims of natural forces. The rural world is a complex environment. Caught up in the tide of history, it dissolves, loses its character and is increasingly unable to affirm its specific identity. At the same time, it takes its root in what constitutes a rural community’s neighbourly values, in what has nourished the rural spirit from far back, in the gestures and rituals that continually mix past and present. This world, this earth, is something we wish would never change.